


butter sunlight

by bombshells



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Assassins, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, sibling and family bonding, some maiko in the beginning and some kataang too, some political stuff but that's not the focus, we said fuck the monarchy! lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27269005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bombshells/pseuds/bombshells
Summary: “Why didn’t you tell us?” Katara asks.Zuko shrugs, and then winces, because his general upper torso area still hurts like a giant bruise. “Would you believe me if I said I was too tired?”Katara smiles ruefully, and the bags under her eyes are suddenly very pronounced. “I would.”Later, Zuko would spend a lot of time trying to figure out what she means.-Post-Canon. The world keeps turning, and Zuko and Katara have to learn to turn with it.
Relationships: Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Hakoda & Katara (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 33
Kudos: 101





	1. I

Weirdly, it starts with Mai.

He’d just finished up a meeting with his council- there’d been a growing problem of rebel groups in the last two years since he’d become Fire Lord. Some of them- much to his dismay- had been old Ozai loyalists, most of them connected to old Fire Nation money families, forming societies such as the New Ozai society, or, more recently, the Sozin’s Sunrise group, which would have been a really funny name if had they not attempted to murder Zuko twice. But recently there had been new rebel groups -anti-royalists, he was told. Anarchists, fanatics, radicals. Those were the words tossed around in the meeting rooms. They had not attempted anything violent yet, but there was growing dissent on the streets of Caldera, and it was only getting worse in the countryside.

Mind swimming with the information he’d gotten from the last briefing, he trudged wearily to meet Mai by the fountain in the courtyard. In truth, all he wanted to do these days was climb into bed, curl up, and shrink so small that nobody could see him and ask him things anymore. He had never felt exhaustion this bone-deep before- he’d come close, back when he’d been on the run in the Earth Kingdom, but back then, the exhaustion had been mostly physical. Greatly mental, of course, but back then, he could at least lie down and sleep and get away from it for at least a little while. Now he worked long, long into the night, and when he could go to bed early, he lay there, head aching with information, characters from the scrolls and missives he read imprinted on the backs of his eyelids.

He sees her, sitting elegantly at the edge of the fountain. Her dark hair, like ink, spills over her shoulders, complimenting the dark makeup she uses to paint her lips and the rims of her eyelids. Some of the councilmen had grumbled about how she looked unbecoming for a Fire Nation lady, for -and Zuko cringed whenever he heard it- the future Fire Lady. Zuko often ended these grumblings with a swift look of dismissal. He thought Mai was beautiful, because she was. And he liked that she was expressing herself more. She’d told him about it, late into the meager nights they could spend together- how she was still in the process of figuring herself out. Of distancing herself from a lifetime of quiet suffocation.

She’d even sparked a movement among the younger residents of Caldera. Mai’s new dark style is apparently becoming very popular. The two of them laugh about it, sometimes, the idea of Mai being a trendsetter.

She sees him, and smiles faintly. He won’t lie to himself- he is not the best at reading people. But Mai is closer to him than most, and over the years he’d learned to notice the little signs of what she was feeling. That, and ever since she’d stood up to Azula, she’d been learning to express herself more. To be easier to understand. That is why Zuko knows, the moment he sees the way her smile doesn’t reach her eyes, that something is wrong.

“Hi,” she says, when he reaches her. There is something holding her back. She does not kiss him like she usually does.

“Hi,” he says, and his heart starts to beat frantically, the way it used to when they were younger and used to break up every couple of days. A canary in a coal mine.

“I’ve missed you,” he adds, nervously.

“I’ve missed you too,” she says. There’s something strange about the cadence of her voice. It is almost- gentle. Mai is not _gentle._ She looks away from him and looks out over the courtyard. “Do you remember this fountain?”

“Of course,” he says. He remembers clearly the fateful day Azula decided to humiliate them both and send them crashing into a pond together. It seems like such a long time ago. The Mai of today would have rather died than put an apple on her own head. “This is our fountain.”

Mai smiles a little ruefully. “She really had us by the neck, didn’t she? All figured out.”

It’s weird that she’s bringing Azula up. Zuko is very aware that Mai will never be able to forgive Azula, not the way he has. She played too big a part in both of their personal traumas, and Mai is not pliant. She is stiff and brittle, and she will stay that way, and Zuko knows that, and he loves her.

“She was good at that kind of stuff,” he says, and the past tense is important, because Azula is no longer good at that kind of stuff.

“She was,” Mai agrees. She points at the tree across the courtyard. “I used to sit under that tree a lot. I’d tell Azula that I was tired, then I’d sit there and watch you. She put it together really easily.”

Zuko is surprised. “You liked me back then?”

He had not known, because of course he hadn’t. He’d always thought Mai had started liking him back in Ba Sing Se, around the time he had started liking her. The idea of his embarrassing ten-year-old self being an object of admiration for someone like Mai is very foreign to him.

“Yes, dummy,” she says affectionately. “And it was really obvious.”

“It wasn’t _that_ obvious.” Mai gives him a look, and he laughs, because of course it was obvious.

“After the thing with the fountain, Azula and Ty Lee made fun of me for it,” she says. “They sang songs about it and kept threatening to tell you and said you would laugh at me. I -well. I didn’t let them know it bothered me. Then I went home and cried for hours and hours and hours.”

It would have been a funny story, coming from anyone else, but Zuko knows how Mai has spent her entire life being punished for her emotions, and he feels suddenly very sad.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she says simply. “I- I just-” She falters. Mai doesn’t falter.

“What is it, Mai?” Zuko asks, even though he already knows, somewhere. “What are you trying to tell me?”

There is a very heavy pause. She doesn’t look at him.

“I’m leaving,” she finally says, in a very small voice.

He doesn’t really register it at first. “Leaving?” he says. “Where? For how long?”

“I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. I might go see Ty Lee,” Mai says, still determinedly not looking at him. “But I don’t think I’m coming back. For a long while.”

Zuko pauses for a second. He understands what she’s saying. “I- I-” he stumbles. His uncle used to tell him to use his words when he was younger, and Zuko suddenly feels ten again. “ _Mai.”_

She finally looks at him, and her eyes are full of tears. Mai has never, ever cried in front of him. In front of anyone, as far as he knows. She’s come close. She’s gotten angry and sad and everything in between. But she’s never cried. That was something she always reserved for herself.

“At least I didn’t leave you a letter,” Mai says, smiling painfully, in her own very agonizingly weak attempt at humor.

“Is this about that?” Zuko says desperately. “I’m sorry, Mai- hurting you was the last thing I wanted. And if I’ve done anything else, if I-”

“It’s not you,” Mai says, holding up a hand. “It really isn’t. You didn’t do anything- nothing you could help. Just- where is this _going,_ Zuko?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where is our relationship going?” she insists.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Can’t we just be together?”

“No, we can’t,” she says. “Zuko, if we’re to stay together, I’m to become Fire Lady. I’d give us around two more years before the Sages insist we get married. They’re already hinting about it now- don’t deny it. But when I think about being Fire Lady it’s like I stop being able to breathe.”

“Is that so bad?” he says, voice small. “Being Fire Lady?”

Mai straightens in anger. “Yes, it is!” She forces herself, visibly, to relax. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. And I just realized…I’ve lived my whole life for other people. My parents, Azula, you. I don’t even know who I am.” Her voice breaks at the last part, and tears begin to fall. “You understand, right?”

The worst part is Zuko does understand. He’s lived his whole life for other people too. He’s living it for other people right now. He remembers that terrible time of not knowing who he was. “I understand.”

“I have to know who I am,” she says. “I have to live for myself for a while. And if I become Fire Lady, I’ll be living for other people for the rest of my life.”

Zuko thinks of his mother, who destroyed her entire life to marry his father, to protect her family. He thinks of the way she erased herself from history to protect him. He does not wish his mother’s fate on Mai. He knows that.

“I understand,” he says, forcing the words out. “You’re right.”

“Does that make me selfish?” she asks.

“You should be,” he says. “I-I can’t ask this of you. Not after what you did for me. What I realize you have been doing for me. I should’ve realized you were unhappy here. I just…” his voice catches as he finally admits it. “I didn’t want to be alone in this place.” He looks up to meet her eyes. “I can’t do this alone, Mai.”

She feels sad for him, the same way he feels sad for her. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t want you to be alone.” _But I can’t stay._

They sit there for a while, in the waning sunlight, listening to the water gurgle.

“You know I love you, right?” she says. “You know I’ll always love you. Maybe- maybe not always this way. But I do. I wouldn’t have done what I did at the Boiling Rock for just anyone.” She takes her hand in his. “You mean a lot to me.”

It is taking a lot for her to say all of these things. “I know,” he says. “I love you too.” He’s so tired, all the time.

“Please take care of yourself,” she says. “Maybe- maybe ask your friends to come. Or your uncle. To help you.”

He can’t ask that of them. They visit, occasionally, but he cannot ask them to help him run a country that ruined their lives. He cannot ask his uncle to take on his burden.

“I’ll think about it,” he says. “Do you need passage? To Kyoshi Island? Or wherever you’re going?”

“I’ve taken care of all of it,” she says. “My bags are packed. After this, I’m leaving.”

It feels so final. Who can Zuko trust, after Mai leaves?

“Okay.”

“I’ll write to you, when I can,” she says. “Maybe I’ll even visit. It’s not like we’ll never see each other again.”

Letters and missives and scrolls. He feels like his entire life is just endless pieces of paper. “Okay.”

They watch the sun slowly seep downwards behind the rooftops.

“How’s Azula?” she suddenly asks.

He’s not surprised she’s asking about her. Maybe this is Mai’s way of saying goodbye to her, too.

“She has good days and bad days. Sometimes we have tea and she’s almost like- you know. When she was sharp. Not enough to send away the chi-blocker, but-” he’s so tired. He’s so damn tired all the time. “It’s not like before. I don’t know. She’s fucked up. We’re both fucked up. He fucked us up.”

Mai’s eyes were distant. “Remember when we went to Ember Island?”

Zuko barks out a laugh. “Ember Island reveals all.”

She smiles wryly. “Spirits, something was so wrong with us. Remember Chan? You know Azula kissed him? Then she scared him away.”

“I want to say I’m surprised. Remember when she set the volleyball net on fire?”

“Remember when you kicked that table in half?”

“Ty Lee swinging on the chandelier.”

“Li and Lo in those _awful_ bathing suits-” and they’re both laughing.

She’s smiling and her makeup is smudged when she kisses him.

“I’ll miss you,” she says. “Please, take care of yourself.”

“You too.”

“I’ll be going,” she says, and stands up. “Goodbye, Zuko.”

“Goodbye,” he says, and with one last sad smile, she turns and walks away. He watches her go, and then, when he can no longer see her, puts his face in his hands. He can’t and won’t cry, because somebody will inevitably walk up to him and tell him he has something to do, and the Fire Lord’s tears are like a sun that rises in the west. They’re not supposed to exist.

Sure enough, an attendant comes up to him and says that the Minister of Finance is waiting for him in the throne room. He gets up, and counts how many hours are left in the day. There are far too many.

He really can’t do this alone.

* * *

For a while, he just doesn’t tell anyone.

Azula knows, though. When he goes to have tea with her, in her bedroom that overlooks the city, she lets him know, too.

“Mai left for good this time,” she says, and it’s both like and unlike her old self.

“How do you know that?” he asked. Had the servants overheard?

“I saw her leaving with her bags from my window, genius. She kept wiping her face. And you look like a kicked polar bear puppy.”

Zuko has learned to let Azula’s little jabs pass over him like the wind. _Sarcasm is a good sign,_ the palace doctor said. _It means she sees humor in things again._

“What do you want me to do about it?” he says, irritable. He’s not going to be judged in the love life department from a girl who kissed _Chan._

“Nothing,” she said, taking pleasure in things that annoy him, as she always does. “Spirits, you take everything so personally.”

“I just ended a long-term relationship. I think I have the right to take it personally.”

Azula rolls her eyes. “What are you going to do now?”

He opens his mouth, about to struggle for a snarky reply that wouldn’t be _too_ scummy of him to say to his mentally ill sister, when he sees the gleam of the knife in the corner of the room.

“Get down!” he yells, throwing himself down and yanking Azula down with him as a plume of fire erupts in their direction. The teacups shatter and the curtains catch fire. There’s a lot of confusion. Someone keeps shooting fire at him, and it’s all he can do to block- it’s been a while since he sparred, and he’s rusty. For a second, he feels saved -at least Azula’s here- but then he remembers she has not bent fire in two years and is chi-blocked every five hours.

Something slices past him and he feels a burst of pain near his neck. It burns, and Zuko feels woozy. There is more than one person in the room with them, and he does not know how he or the guards missed it.

More people storm in- his guards, and it’s all over very quickly. Nobody’s even hurt. It’s almost too easy.

The guards fall over themselves in apology. The prostrate himself before him and beg for his forgiveness for their great lapse. Azula, naturally, thinks it is hysterically funny, as he can hear her laughter. He tells the guards to get up. He is so fucking tired and his neck hurts.

“Find out who’s behind this,” he instructs the captain, a man named Kaji. “And I want extra protection in Azula’s quarters, and stricter security at the prison. Recruit more people, if you have to- I’ll make adjustments to the budget. I-” He pauses, losing his train of thought. His neck _hurts_ and the ache has spread to his head _._

“My lord?” Kaji asks, concerned. He sees something near Zuko’s shoulder, reaches out and plucks it off. He holds it up. “My lord-”

It’s a poison dart, clear as day. _Oh, for fuck’s sake._

His knees crumple as Kaji yells, “MY LORD!”

* * *

He has a lot of really weird dreams and he remembers none of them. A familiar hand that smells like ginseng is placing a wet cloth on his forehead as he slowly grasps at consciousness.

“Good afternoon, my nephew,” he hears his uncle say. For a second he thinks he is back at Ba Sing Se, during that strange fever. He opens his eyes and sees the red of his bedroom. His uncle is smiling gently at him, and there is relief in his eyes.

“Uncle,” he says sluggishly. His head _aches_ and he realizes he has a fever. “I…I thought you were at the tea shop.”

“I was,” Uncle says. “Until I got a letter that said you had been seriously wounded during an attempt on your life. They wanted me to run things until you woke up. Power vacuums are dangerous.” He does not say the real reason he came, which both of them know.

“Wait,” he says, suddenly panicked. “How long-”

“It’s only been five days, Zuko,” Uncle reassures him. “You should be thankful. This poison could have killed you if it had lasted longer.”

“Five days?” he says. “But you were in Ba Sing Se. How could you have possibly come to the Fire Nation in five days?”

“I was lucky enough to be in the company of our airborne friends when I got the letter,” Uncle says, and almost on cue, the door to his bedroom opens and Aang and Katara walk in.

“Zuko!” Aang exclaims, hurrying over. “You’re awake!”

“Aang,” he says weakly. He is so loud, and Zuko feels like his head has been trampled by an ostrich horse. “Hey, buddy.”

Aang’s gotten tall. He’s fourteen now, and almost as tall as Zuko is now. In fact, they were probably the same height. Zuko offhandedly thinks that Aang will probably end up taller than him. The thought is a bit funny, so he smiles. He feels a rush of affection for this silly, kind boy who saved the world and dropped everything to save him, too.

“You gave us quite a scare,” Aang continues, sitting next to Iroh on the edge of his bed. “Lucky Appa got Katara here in time, right?”

So that’s why he survived. He should have put it together sooner. He drags his head with difficulty in Katara’s direction. She’s gotten very pretty, at sixteen, the round girlishness of her face replaced with a sort of natural beauty, her hair down with half of it tied back in a sort of mix between the Water Tribe and Fire Nation styles. There are rings under her eyes; she must have been healing him for a while.

She’s smiling at him, relieved, and he remembers the last time she’d smiled at him like that, when he’d taken a bolt of lightning for her.

“That’s twice you’ve saved my life,” he says. “Thank you, Katara. I owe you.”

“I’ll take your stock in mangoes in compensation for my services,” she says wryly. “Although I wish the first time I’d have seen you in two years wouldn’t have been after you’d been poisoned.”

He remembers Azula. “Azula-”

“She’s fine,” Uncle says. “They did not put a scratch on her. They were after you, my boy.”

Zuko lets out a pent-up breath. “Okay. Okay.” He passes a hand over his face. “This New Ozai society is becoming a pain in my neck. Literally.”

“Ah-” Uncle pauses. He, Aang, and Katara share a meaningful look. “Actually, it was not the New Ozai society who was behind the attack.”

“What?” Zuko tries to push through his foggy mind and deduce who else could have done it. “Who did it?”

“An, ah, extreme few people of the Freedom Movement group,” Uncle supplies. “The… anti-royalists, if you’ll recall.”

“Oh,” Zuko says. He doesn’t say anything for a bit. “Damn.”

“You don’t have to worry about that now,” Katara says fussily, pressing a hand to his forehead to feel his temperature. “You’re out of the danger zone, but you’ll be sick for a couple more days. I want you to focus on resting so we can get you back on your feet as soon as possible. I could only get part of the poison out-” She stops. There’s an awkward silence. Nobody looks at anybody. It becomes apparent that Katara bloodbent the poison out. He’s glad he was not awake to feel it.

“Thank you, Katara,” he says again, because he knows how much it must have cost her. She did that for him. He’s always hurting her, whether he wants to or not.

“Don’t mention it,” she says shortly, and the subject is dropped for a very tense few minutes. He wonders who else saw her do it.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone that Mai left?” Aang says. “We had to hear it from Azula, of all people. I’m hurt, Hotman.”

It is a collection of words that does not make sense to him. “Azula?”

“She was in your room when we arrived. In her words, you were ‘hogging her physician’,” Uncle Iroh says, and his eyes sparkle with amusement. “Apparently she refused to leave your side until I got here.”

Zuko feels oddly touched. For years he had been convinced that Azula despised him at worst and tolerated him at best. She will never admit any of this to him, though, so he takes this information and stores it in the place where he stores all of his most precious things.

“Huh.”

“I am sorry about Mai, nephew,” Uncle says, and Zuko feels horrible all over again. In truth, he’d been running away from it. He’d felt curiously numb and wanted it to stay that way, because he did not have time to get over a breakup. But now they’re talking about it and Zuko really _doesn’t._

“Did something happen?” Katara probes gently.

“No,” he says, sighing. “It was bound to happen, anyway. It’s not like we fought about it.” He takes a shaky breath. “We were really civil about the whole thing.”

“That is a sign of mutual respect,” Uncle says, patting his good shoulder. “It is always wise to part on good terms.”

“I’m fine,” he says, looking away. “It’s all handled. You don’t have to be worried. I’m not a weeping mess or whatever.”

“That’s not what Azula sa-” Aang mumbles, before Katara elbows him.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Katara asks.

Zuko shrugs, and then winces, because his general upper torso area still hurts like a giant bruise. “Would you believe me if I said I was too tired?”

Katara smiles ruefully, and the bags under her eyes are suddenly very pronounced. “I would.”

Later, Zuko would spend a lot of time trying to figure out what she means.

* * *

He heals, eventually. The fever goes away, and so do the aches and pains. Aang and Katara stay for a little more than they have to- he knows they want to cheer him up. He can tells his advisors they are talking about important political matters when they are really sitting at the turtleduck pond, eating mangoes and telling unfunny jokes (if only Sokka were here), brushing Appa and teaching Momo to dance. It works. He feels himself being fine.

He feels a little less fine when they leave, but he knows they have to. They put their meeting with King Kuei on hold just to make sure he was okay, and he is thankful for that. Aang squeezes him tight and winks at him as he jumps up to Appa’s back. Katara hugs him a bit gentler, but her eyes are warm.

“Write to me, alright? You’re not alone,” she tells him. “There are people who care about you, Zuko. Remember that.”

“I will,” he promises. He suddenly loves both of them very much- Aang, who forgave him first, and Katara, who forgave him last. “Take care. Um. Take more mangoes, if you want. There was a surplus in the harvest this year. We don’t know what to do with them.”

Katara laughs. “I’ve had enough for a good while. When I’m craving them again, I’ll stop by.”

“Alright,” he says, smiling.

She waves at him from Appa’s back, and then they are gone.

Uncle stays for a few more weeks, but he can’t leave the Jasmine Dragon forever. Zuko insists. He cannot keep his uncle here, away from what he loves most.

“I am worried about you,” Uncle says. “You’ve lost so much weight, Zuko. You look so tired all of the time.”

“I can handle this, Uncle,” Zuko tries to reassure him, the way he has comforted Zuko his entire life. “It was just one incident. Kaji’s recruited more people. It’ll be okay.” The words sound empty even to him.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Zuko sighs. They watch a turtleduckling struggle to learn to swim. “Uncle, what happens if I die?”

Uncle looked alarmed. “Why would you ask such a thing? You are _not_ going to die anytime soon.”

“I’m sorry I just-” He gestures with his hands meaninglessly. “To the Fire Nation, I mean.”His uncle is looking at him strangely. “Since you do not have an heir, there will be a point of contention among the Sages whether I or Azula have the sacred right to rule. The Avatar will probably be called over to decide, so he will likely choose me.” Uncle then looks troubled. “But that won’t happen, Zuko. You will be alive for a long time, spirits willing.”

Zuko doesn’t really know about that. He tries to imagine what would happen. Azula, drinking her tea alone and regressing. His uncle, another of his sons dead, grief-stricken and taking up this thankless job in his old age, under threat of assassination himself. And then what about after his uncle? He can’t guarantee what would happen then.

Thoughts begin to swirl in Zuko’s mind.

“I’m sorry,” he tells his uncle, who looks a bit shaken. “I was just curious.”


	2. II

He lay there, the barest rise and fall of his chest the only indication that he was unconscious and not dead. In the two years since she had last seen him, he had still not grown his hair out the way other Fire Lords did. There is a dark circle under his unscarred eye that rivals the scarred one. He has lost so much weight already.

The room is silent, like it is holding its breath. Outside, the full moon shines on, catching the light of the gossamer curtains rustling slightly in the night’s breeze. It is midnight, and the boy who saved Katara’s life is about to slip through her fingers like water.

Iroh stands next to him, and there is pain on his face that she had never seen before. His fear leaks into the room and infects everyone and everything around him. Distantly, Katara hears a howler-crane cry.

She approaches Zuko, exposes his chest, holds her hands over the scar she’d already healed once before. As soon as she touches him she knows that healing will not do. The poison is too powerful. It must be removed.

How will she remove it?

The palace physician had told her what it was called when they arrived. _The Tears of Agni._ In this dosage, there is no antidote for it but death.

Aang stands sentinel at the door. “Can you heal him, Katara?” His voice echoes strangely, and he is trying so very hard to mask his desperation.

“I-I don’t think so,” she says, and the fear begins to set in. Iroh makes a choked sound.

The moon is full outside, and Katara knows what to do. She can feel the poison moving in his veins, just within her grasp. She doesn’t think about it. She simply raises her hands, and forms them into claws, and Zuko’s body stiffens.

“Katara?” Aang says, and his eyes are wide. Iroh is watching her, wide-eyed but silent. She ignores them both. She makes a grabbing motion with one hand, and she can feel it. She must move quickly and precisely, or she will cause irreparable damage. It is almost instinct, the way she moves her hands, forcing the poisoned blood to do her bidding, and before she knows it, she has gathered what she can. She bends the tears of a god. With one fell swoop, the dark liquid flies out of Zuko’s mouth and nose and splatters nearby. He coughs once, twice. And then does not move again.

Someone is screaming, and Katara doesn’t know who. When she wakes up, she realizes it was her.

* * *

“Katara? Katara!” Aang shakes her awake like he always does these days.

She sits up and feels the cold air on her face. She is not in the Fire Nation royal palace anymore; she is on Appa, with Aang, and it is daytime, not nighttime. Her heart slows down, and she turns to watch Aang as he sets a comforting hand on her shoulder. As it always is in times like these, his face is pale with concern.

“Another nightmare?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

She nods. She’d always been subject to nightmares, ever since her mother died, but lately they’d been getting more frequent, and less easy to hide. Where before she would wake quickly, startled but quiet, now her dreams are violent and loud, as disturbed as she has become on the inside.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Aang says hesitantly. “Was it your mother again?”

The old replay of the day her mother had passed used to be her most frequent nightmare- the same loop, over and over, of her mother telling her to get her father, of running in the snow, of finding the soldier gone and her mother dead. For a while, after she had gone and faced Yon Rha, it was almost like that particular wound had healed, but ever since the war had ended it seemed to have joined a cocktail of her other night terrors.

Sometimes it is the day when Aang had been shot by Azula. Just seeing him plummet to the ground is enough to terrify her, but sometimes, it is her on Appa, desperately healing him over and over and receiving no response. Sometimes it is the day of the Siege of the North, when the moon spirit had died, and the world had gone dark, and she could tangibly feel her powers slipping away. Sometimes it is on the day of Sozin’s Comet, and she was watching Aang and Ozai from afar. Sometimes it is the night she had learned to bloodbend. Often, it is simply the moment Azula’s lightning struck Zuko and not her.

This dream is new, though. She had expected it, though. Her bloodbending did not come without consequences.

“It wasn’t my mother,” she says, bending water out of her pouch to splash her face. “It was that night when I healed Zuko.” _Healed._ She wants to scoff. “He didn’t wake up in the dream.”

Aang nods in understanding. “It’s normal you would dream about that,” he says. “It was scary to see him like that.”

Katara stares at her hands. Long bender’s fingers, delicate, graceful, a little bony. Could those really do what she did?

“I bent blood, Aang,” Katara says, and she feels so empty. “I promised myself I wouldn’t. Never again. Not after- you know. But I bent blood. I bent _Zuko’s_ blood.” Her voice catches. “He’s my friend and I bent his blood like it was nothing.”

“You saved his life,” Aang gently corrects her. “He would have died if you hadn’t done that. All of us know that.”

Still, Katara feels like she’s crossed a line. She knows it doesn’t make sense, but she does. Zuko had already known she could bloodbend. Aang had already known she could bloodbend. Iroh hadn’t -but by all logic, he would never judge her for it. But she still feels so, so guilty.

“I shouldn’t have bloodbent,” Katara says. “I should have found another way to heal him.”

“You heard the doctor,” Aang insists. “There was no antidote. You really were the only person who could save him.”

“I bet he’s afraid of me now,” Katara says. “I bet you all are.”

“Katara, you’re his _friend,”_ Aang says, and he looks genuinely worried for her, and she can’t take it, she can’t take it. “I love you. We all do. We know you would never hurt us. You _saved his life-”_

“That doesn’t change anything!” she says, slamming her fist on the saddle. “You’ve seen me do it. You know I could do it. You’ll know forever. And in the back of your minds, you’ll always know that I can if I want to, and you’ll be scared-” She chokes back a sob. “I should have found another way. I didn’t think about it, and I just bloodbent, because the full moon was up and I could _feel_ the power that I’d been missing and I just couldn’t help myself- and now I’ve crossed that line and I can just- I can just _do that._ I could feel his heart in my hands. If I just closed my fist a little harder, I could have stopped it altogether. It would have been like snapping a twig.”

She sobs now, hard, and she doesn’t look at Aang. She can’t bear to look at him, to feel the horrible pain in his eyes at seeing her like this. They’ve been through this before, the nightmares and the fear and the self-reproach.

He hadn’t been afraid before, but she can feel the fear in his voice now. “Katara…” He puts an arm around her, and she leans into his embrace even though she knows she doesn’t deserve it. She’s so guilty, all the time, and she can’t stand it.

“That’s not who you are,” he says. “You know- sometimes, I have nightmares about the Avatar state. I dream that I destroy everything and everyone, and that all of you run away from me.” He holds her closer. “The key to getting over that is knowing who you are. Who are you, Katara?”

_Who are you, Katara?_

Katara finds out that she has no answer, not anymore. In the war, it was so clear. She was a master waterbender, a teacher of the Avatar. She was a girl from the Southern Water Tribe. She was Sokka’s sister and Hakoda’s daughter. But now the Avatar needs no teacher, and her bending, over the past two years, has slowly been getting weaker, her grasp on her element fading inexplicably. She has not been home in years.

Who is she now? The Avatar’s girlfriend? A bloodbender? A broken girl?

She dissolves into tears.

“Katara,” Aang says. “I think we should go to the South Pole. I think it’ll be good for you.”

“No,” she says, and the thought fills her with horror and guilt. For the past two years, she and Aang had been travelling the world, fixing problems in other nations, rebuilding the Air Temples, spreading the culture of the Air Nomads. It was important work. She couldn’t stop that just because she was the only person who didn’t have a hold on herself. She was the one who held people together. She wasn’t supposed to be a burden. “No, we can’t.”

“Why not?” he says, and he is smiling for her sake, she knows it. When had he become the one taking care of her, instead of the other way around? “We can rest for a while. I know you miss Sokka and your dad. I do, too. Why don’t we visit them?”

She can’t bear it if they see her like this. “But the Air Temples-”

“They’ve waited a hundred years,” he says. “They can wait a little more.”

And his hope is infectious. Maybe this will work when all else had failed. For months now, she and Aang had been trying different things to keep her nightmares at bay. The most recent attempt had her sleeping in the daytime, rather than at night- they’d theorized that maybe the energy from the moon was making her own chi hyperactive. It hadn’t exactly worked, but- maybe he was right. Maybe she did need to go home.

“Okay,” she finally says, and Aang beams. “Let’s go.”

* * *

She can’t deny that she’s missed home. But it’s not the home she remembers, and somehow, she feels worse.

There’s a port now, with big ships from the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Water Tribe (and a tiny Fire Nation steamer) docked. In his letters, Sokka had described it as the beginnings of the South’s economic explosion. It feels a little unreal now, to see the busy, growing port town in a place that had been practically deserted before. Appa glides down, and people wave to them from the docks.

When they get down from the saddle, Sokka and her father are waiting. Her father crushes her in a massive hug, and Sokka follows suit, both of them talking about how much they’ve missed her, and for a second, Katara thinks things will be okay.

It feels nice to be with her family, really. Sokka has gotten tall, resembling their father more and more. Her father, meanwhile, has begun to gray at his temples, the lines of his face deepening. It really has been so much time since she’s seen them. She’d thought letters would help, but all they really did had been to demonstrate how utterly disconnected they’d become.

As they walk back to their village- well, not a village anymore; a town, and sooner or later, it would become a city- Sokka regales them with every detail he could possibly remember about the rebuilding efforts, Aang listening closely. Katara and Hakoda walk a few steps behind them, her father’s hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

“I’ve missed you, little fish,” he says. He and Gran-Gran had called her that when she was so much smaller, and waterbending was a new and wonderful thing, and he could not keep her out of the water for an hour at a time. “Why didn’t you visit sooner? Two years is a long time.”

Guilt, guilt, guilt. “I was really busy,” she says feebly. “With Aang.”

“Of course,” Hakoda says, looking off into the distance. “You don’t need to justify it.”

_She does._

“Everyone’s missed you so much,” he says. “The little kids -well, they aren’t so little anymore- keep asking when you’ll come home.”

“I have now,” she plasters a smile on her face. It’ll be good to see the kids she spent most of her childhood looking after. “Any new waterbenders?”

“Not besides the ones that came from the North,” he says, referencing the influx of immigrants that had come to help rebuild the South since the opening of the Northern Water Tribe’s walls once more. “Pakku says it’ll happen in time. The South will have its benders again.” He wrinkles his nose. “You’d have thought I was too old to have a new stepdad. Your Gran-Gran didn’t even warn me before springing him on me.”

Katara laughs. “Is Sokka still calling him Grampakku?”

“A bunch of other things, too,” Hakoda says slyly, and they are both laughing.

Their village is different now. The laughable wall was gone; there are clear, paved streets; the tiny igloos had disappeared and had been replaced by larger, sturdier structures, in many of which Katara can recognize Pakku’s handiwork. _It’s improvement,_ she tells herself, and she’s happy to see her people thriving, but there are so many unfamiliar faces, and she feels lost. She feels like a stranger.

_Who are you, Katara?_

All of the houses are nice, but the one they stop at seems even nicer, and it feels weird that Katara does not recognize her own house. Gran-Gran is waiting to welcome them, and for Katara, everything else fades away. She runs and runs and runs and then she is in her grandmother’s arms, and the world is warm, and this is _familiar._ She remembers this. This hasn’t changed.

“Katara,” Gran-Gran says, her voice soft with love. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Everyone ignores that they cry a little.

When they go inside and sit around the fire, Katara feels…happy. Happier than she has in a while. She sits leaning into Gran-Gran, enveloped in warmth, as Hakoda fills them in on what has happened recently in the Tribe and Aang tells them funny stories from their travels and Sokka and Pakku unsubtly rib at each other through the entire sitting.

She thinks maybe things will be alright. But she’s wrong.

* * *

It starts with the rebuilding. Despite her family’s protestations that she and Aang rest a few days and simply see the sights of the new Southern Water Tribe, Katara, after a day or so of penguin-sledding with Aang and Sokka and catching up with Gran-Gran, refuses to be treated like a tourist in her own home. She strong-arms Sokka into letting her join the massive new construction project for the new, grand hotel in which they’ll hopefully be welcoming incoming tourists. She, a group of workers, and a few waterbenders from the North head down to the location to work, under the supervision of a Northern architect.

As they walk down the path that leads to the construction site, Katara walks a little off to the side, suddenly feeling alienated. The three other waterbenders are all men, and two of them around her father’s age – the other one she recognizes from her time in the North as one of Pakku’s students. They are looking at her out of the corners of their eyes, a little wary, but also sizing her up. She’s not unfamiliar with this, but it still dredges up the old rage she’d felt when she’d first been faced with the North’s sexism.

 _Keep your cool,_ she tells herself. _You helped bring down Ozai. You won an Agni Kai against Azula. You have nothing to prove._

The hotel’s skeleton has mostly been completed, and the nonbender workers get straight to work without much instruction from the architect, a spindly, no-nonsense man with big round spectacles who seems, at least, to appreciate her presence. He turns to the waterbenders.

“I want to showcase the true beauty of the South’s art history,” he explains, unfurling a few scrolls he had kept tucked under his arm. “Your work will be mainly decorative, but no less important than the construction work.”

He then goes into detail about the designs he has in mind for the balconies, the columns, and the ice sculptures he wants surrounding the path leading up to the building. The great centerpiece of it all will be the huge fountain, which will be a giant frozen sculpture, giving the impression of water fountain having suddenly been frozen, the ice creating elaborately organic shapes in the air.

“It’s delicate work,” the architect says. “But it will give the hotel an identity unlike any other. Where else in the world can a fountain of water be forever frozen in midair?”

To the Katara of two years ago, this would have been child’s play, but now, looking over the careful designs on the scroll, she realizes that this will take a lot of careful, intricate bending. _I can do this,_ she assures herself.

The waterbenders position themselves around where the architect mapped the fountain’s location, and with measured, flowing movements, they begin to bend the ice to their bidding. Even though she’s supposed to be focused on her task, Katara finds herself glancing at the other waterbenders all of the time, comparing herself to them. They have a good grasp on their bending, raising the ice easily but firmly, the bricks and shapes they create solid and dependable. She, on the other hand, is inexplicably sloppy. Her ice shatters easily, the shapes awkward and messy, and the snow often falls apart in her grip. It almost reminds her of when she’d first been teaching herself how to bend when she was fourteen, when she could barely hold a globe of water up at a time without the water leaking out.

 _What is wrong with me?_ she thinks, her frustration growing.

This is not the same bending she did when she had beat Azula -or even Zuko, in the North Pole. This is not the same bending she’d used to down entire airships on the Day of Black Sun. This is not the bending of a master.

“No, no, no!” the architect cries out. “Master Katara, you’re doing it all wrong! This design requires more subtlety than that!”

She snaps out of her reverie and realizes the hideous job she’d been doing. Humiliated, she mutters an apology and tears it all down.

As she readies herself to start again, she catches the low laughter of the other benders.

“So that’s Master Pakku’s favorite?” one of the older ones snickers. “You really exaggerated her skills, Kanuuq.”

Kanuuq, the younger waterbender, shrugs, slightly embarrassed.

“I guess there are some things you just can’t make up for,” he says quietly, and the other two laugh louder.

Katara refuses to acknowledge them, settling into a bending stance, even though her movements are stiff and jerky. She blinks back hot, frustrated tears. She wants to prove them wrong. She wants to make the laughter die in their throats.

She can’t. They’re right. She is not who she used to be.

* * *

Later that night, she bites down her pride and asks Pakku for help. Together, in silence, they trudge out to a jutting cliff that looks out over the harbor. Even though he has softened up considerably since marrying Gran-Gran, he still has his characteristic surly reticence, and for once, Katara is comforted. She doesn’t know what to say if he talks to her.

When they arrive, he stands, arms crossed, waiting. “Show me your forms.”

Katara goes through the forms from the very beginning, and gets sloppier and sloppier. It’s like she’s fourteen again – no, worse. The water just slips out from her grip. The ice collapses the minute her focus snaps. Her water whips and waves and the mountains of ice refuse to climb, to touch the sky like they used to. Slowly, she gets more nervous. She had never felt like this, with Pakku. He had angered her before, but she’d never been outright afraid. She suddenly realizes she is terrified of failing, of proving his long-ago beliefs about her right, and she presses forward with a fury.

“Stop, stop,” Pakku says. “I’ve seen enough.”

“Well?” Katara demands, panting. “What am I doing wrong?”

Pakku has a strange expression on his face.

“Nothing,” he says, looking confused. “Your forms are perfect. I could not have done them better myself.”

This is, perhaps, the worst thing she could possibly hear.

“What do you _mean?”_ she insists. “Then why isn’t my bending working?”

“Have you been severely injured recently?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t know,” Pakku says, looking truly perplexed. “In all my years of teaching waterbending, I have never seen anything quite like this.”

Katara begins to panic. “Then what am I supposed to do?” she nearly yells. “It’s been going on for _months_ now, and I- I know it all, I know the forms, I’ve done them a thousand times-”

“Perhaps you are in need of deep spiritual reflection,” Pakku suggests, frowning. “Your troubles in bending could be the result of…emotional turmoil.”

 _“Emotional turmoil?”_ She doesn’t want to hear this. Her _emotional turmoil_ was the _result_ of this bending problem, not the cause of it! “That’s not it!”

“How can you be certain? Look at yourself. I make one tiny suggestion and you explode.”

This stokes her further. She will not have it. She will not have Pakku theorizing that she is _too emotional to bend._

“Bending is all about emotion!” she shouts. “It’s about how connected you are to your element, how it responds to you- you can’t just-”

Pakku throws his hands up in defeat. “Fine! You asked for my advice, and you got it! I am finished here. Reflect on yourself and on why _you_ are blocking your own bending, and then come to me for any advice. I will not be ordered around by a foolish, hardheaded girl two generations younger than me!”

He stomps away, grumbling under his breath, and Katara regrets her outburst, but does not go after him. Instead, she sits down in the snow, buries her face in her parka, and screams.

* * *

Her confrontation with Pakku makes her stubbornly determined _not_ to reflect, in any way possible. Instead, for the next month, she throws herself into as much bending as possible, and gets progressively worse.

_I just need more practice. I’ve gotten rusty. That’s it._

She joins the healers in the new clinic for a while and buries herself in healing injuries and illnesses from the Southern Water Tribe’s growing population, until she gets so furiously busy that the head healer, a disapproving woman named Yura, says that she’s upsetting the patients and that she has to leave.

 _Healing’s gone,_ she thinks, and her panic grows. She invests her time in the most crude, formless waterbending possible- flattening ice for new roads. She spends two days doing this, until the head planner insists she stop.

“They are not straight, and they deviate from the plans we made with the Chief,” he tells her. “Please, rest for now. We will ask for your help when we need it.”

 _So they want me out of the way,_ she thinks, and her rage is so deep she thinks she will never see the end of it.

When she goes home, the conversations are awkward. Aang has a strange look on his face, and picks at his food. Sokka watches her carefully, not even poking the gentlest of fun at her, as if she is a sleeping dragon. Pakku sullenly shovels food into his mouth. Whenever she leaves or enters the room, the conversation is stilted and abrupt, and Katara realizes that they are all talking about her when she isn’t there. It makes her guilty. It makes her angry.

The next morning, her father wakes her early.

“Come fishing with me,” he says. “I could use two extra hands. My reflexes aren’t what they used to.”

Katara’s confused. “I thought you always took Sokka fishing.”

“Why shouldn’t I take you? I used to, when you were younger. Don’t you remember?”

She does have faint memories of being on the ice with her father, long before her mother’s death, but like all of her memories of that time, they’re hazy. “Alright.”

He smiles in his lopsided Sokka-grin. “I’m waiting for you outside.”

Katara got dressed and joined him, and together, they went to fish. Their old fishing waters were nearly untouched by the newer developments, quiet and undisturbed, and if Katara tried, she could pretend it was like before.

For a while, they are quiet. Hakoda occasionally stabs a spear into the water, bringing up a fish or two, depositing him in their woven net. Katara watches the water carefully, stabbing her own spear, but she’s not used to the nonbending way, and brings up nothing. Eventually, she abandons the spear and resorts to bending.

For a second, she has the fish. She desperately grasps at it, raises it in the air, water escaping the globe and splashing back down, and she has it- she nearly has it in the net- but it just _slips,_ like everything does, and the fish flops back into the water. Katara makes a sound of frustration. When she turns around, she realizes her father has stopped fishing and had been watching her.

“I’m not usually like this,” she says desperately, and hates herself.

“I know,” he says calmly. “I’ve seen you before.”

Katara nods tersely, and moves to try again, but her father interrupts her. “Let’s rest for a bit.”

She lowers her hands.

Hakoda looks out over the water and ice. “You know, these days I’ve been thinking a lot about that story Gran-Gran used to tell. About the man who wandered into the spirit world, looking for something to hunt, and when he came back, he’d discovered that fifty years had passed.”

Katara had always hated that story.

“I used to wonder what it would be like. And then when I came back from the war, I understood,” he says. “Suddenly everything was different, and the war was over. I didn’t know what to do with myself anymore.” He looks her in the eyes. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Katara?”

She nods.

“I used to be so sure of what I’m supposed to do,” she admits quietly. “Back before the war ended- it was horrible, but at least I knew who I was. I was the caretaker and the healer and- I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. And when I think of the future I always draw a blank. I- I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in a world without the war.” She takes a deep, shaky breath. “Isn’t that messed up?”

Her father makes a sound of agreement. “It is messed up.”

“And I feel so guilty, all the time,” she says, like she can’t stop it. “I feel like I’m letting everyone down. I want to go back to how I used to be.”

“What are you guilty about? Have you hurt anyone?”

“No,” Katara says, looking away.

“Then what is it you feel guilty about?”

“I don’t know. I just do.”

“I think,” Hakoda says, “that you need to be kinder to yourself.”

Katara stares numbly at the water.

“Ever since Kya passed,” he goes on, and a twinge of pain passes over Katara’s heart, “you’ve always had the most pressure on you. I should have known it would have consequences. And I’m sorry, little fish. That was my mistake.”

Katara’s guilt doubles. Her father should not be apologizing just because she cannot get herself together.

“I don’t know what to do.”

“You need to rest,” he says seriously. “You need to do things other than bending yourself into an early grave. You need to let yourself be taken care of for a while.”

“Okay.”

“This is fixable,” he insists. “You just need to reconnect with yourself. It’s going to be alright.”

* * *

When she and her father come back to the town, someone tells her that the Avatar’s waiting for her near the crystal caves. She thinks maybe he wants to take her penguin-sledding again. He’d been extremely patient with her steadily worsening mood over the past month, doing his best to cheer her up, and she suppressed a wave of guilt at the way she’d been holding him back.

When she met him, however, it was obvious he was not going penguin-sledding. He had shed the parka they had given him, back in his Air Nomad clothes, glider in hand. Behind him was Appa.

“What’s going on?” she asks. She has a bad feeling about this.

“I’ve got to go, Katara,” he says. “I have to leave.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me? I could have packed-”

“No, Katara,” Aang says, and he looks like he’s in physical pain. “I’m leaving alone.”

Katara stands there, so, so confused. “Why?”

Aang looks at his feet. “Both of us have a lot of healing to do. And- you need to stay here. Or at least, you need a break from my…stuff.” He fiddles with his glider nervously. “I don’t think we were ready for a relationship.”

“Is this because of how I’ve been acting?” Katara says, stepping closer. “I’m sorry, Aang, I- I didn’t mean to hurt you, I’ve just been so confused and-”

“It’s not your fault,” Aang says. “Don’t think that it’s your fault, please. And it’s not like I’ve stopped loving you or anything- I do love you. This _hurts.”_

“Then _why_ are you leaving?” Katara hates the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. “Why do you want to leave me?”

Aang’s getting teary, too.

“I hate seeing you like this,” he says. “And the past few months I’ve been thinking about the way I see you, and take you for granted, and I realize I’ve been dating an idea and not a person. When I was training with Guru Pathik, do you know what was keeping me from unlocking the Avatar State? It was the thought of having to let go of you.”

“I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” she says, closing her eyes. She feels like putting her hands over her ears and pretending that it’s all another nightmare.

“No, listen,” Aang says. “I thought that was weird, because I knew for a fact that there were Avatars who were in love before. And then this past month- seeing all you’ve been carrying, all you’ve been trying to put aside for my sake, I realized it. It wasn’t that I couldn’t let go of _you._ It was the idea of you- of someone just- perfect. Who helps me and teaches me and takes care of me and just pushes everything away for me. And it’s not fair for either of us.”

“We can work on it,” she says. Everything has always been leaving her- her mother, her father, her _bending-_ she can’t lose Aang, too.

Aang looks so profoundly sad, it is difficult to believe he is almost fifteen. “It’s alright to admit you’ve been hurt by the war, Katara. We all have. And that’s why I think both of us need to work on ourselves. On our own.”

“Don’t leave me alone,” she says, and she feels so, so small and pathetic.

“You won’t be alone,” he says. “There are people who love you, Katara- so many people. I still love you. I always will. But you can’t keep going on pretending everything is fine when it isn’t. You need to start with yourself.” He takes a deep breath. “Both of us do.”

She’s surprised at the wave of rage that overtakes her.

“So that’s it?” she says. “You’re just going to- to run away? Because I’m useless and I can’t bend and I’m not your perfect Katara anymore?”

Aang’s eyes betray a flash of hurt. “You know that’s not what this is about.”

And Katara is sick of it. She’s suddenly sick of it. She turns around and hugs herself, and she refuses to look at him. “Go, then.”

“Katara-”

“ _Just go!”_ This comes out with an explosive sob. “Go and run like a coward. It’s what you always do.”

She knows her words are like sharp ice daggers- but she doesn’t care anymore. She’s done being nice or kind. She’s done being anything at all.

Aang stays there for a long few moments, before she hears his footsteps- light and almost soundless, even on the snow- and a telltale whoosh that means he has airbent himself up to Appa’s saddle.

“Goodbye, Katara,” he says to her back. “I hope you find peace.” And Appa lifts off with a groan, and they are gone.

Katara doesn’t know how long she sits there in the snow, curled in on herself. She cries and cries and cries until she feels nothing at all.

_Who are you, Katara?_

It eventually gets dark, and colder. She knows, in the back of her mind, that this is dangerous, but she doesn’t care anymore. She barely feels the cold. She barely feels anything at all.

She doesn’t know how late it gets when she sees the light of a lantern; it’s Sokka, trudging up to meet her. He sees her and runs forward.

“Katara!” he says frantically. “I’ve been looking for you for _hours-”_ He cuts off when he sees the look on her face. “Come on. Let’s go home together and warm you up.”

 _He knew,_ she thinks. _He knew Aang was going to do this._ She can’t even muster up the energy to be mad.

To Sokka’s credit, he doesn’t do anything to make her feel worse. He’s simple like that. He wraps an arm around her and rubs her shoulders as they walk home by the light of his lantern. Time blurs for her; all she knows is Sokka leading her through the village. Occasionally people stop to talk to him, but he waves them off; and it occurs to her that more people than just Sokka had been looking for her.

They reach their home at one point, much to the relief of their family; she changes out of her sodden parka and into warm, dry clothes, and goes directly to bed. Sokka eventually comes in, alone, and layers more furs on her.

“You’re probably gonna be sick tomorrow,” he says simply. “You holding up?”

She’s so, so tired. “I’m sorry. For making you worry.”

“That’s alright,” he says, giving her a tiny smile. “I’m gonna get back at you later. Steal your share of the sea prunes.”

Katara smiles faintly. “Okay.”

He sits down at the edge of her bed. “You go to sleep now. I’m staying until you do.”

“Okay.”

“You’re gonna wake up tomorrow and we’ll fix this together. That’s what we do.”

“Okay.”

She falls asleep with him watching over her.

* * *

When she wakes up the next morning, she goes to bend water to wash her face, and finds nothing there. She checks her waterskin- it’s full to the brim. She tries again, and again. It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s practically second nature.

But not a drop of water cooperates. 

She stands there for a few minutes, not comprehending.

“I’ve lost my bending,” she says, to no one in particular.

_Who are you, Katara?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOD. This chapter was painful to write. I actually cried a lot near the end, lol, which cannot be healthy. But since I drew from my own struggles with mental health and art block when I wrote this, I guess it's only natural.
> 
> Anyway, I hope I haven't scared anyone off with how depressing this has gotten. I promise it gets better :') This is just Katara's low point. The bright side is that there's nowhere to go but up.
> 
> I'm also sorry for the literal crumbs of Zutara, but this is a slow-burn, lol. They'll eventually spend more time together!!! Trust me. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you to all of the people who commented and left kudos! I am so grateful for your encouragement. Please leave more!
> 
> Also, uh, congratulations to any Americans on the Biden win! I say congrats to Americans, but it's really the whole world that should be celebrating that That Man is not in power anymore, haha. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this (in the angsty way)! Hopefully I will be updating much more frequently.


	3. III

Predictably, Azula regresses.

 _What’s different this time around,_ Zuko thinks, as he nears the chaos that is his sister’s bedroom, _is that it took longer than I thought it would._

He does not have time to theorize why, as he reaches the bedroom door. Azula’s shrill shouting and the shattering of something fragile is heard from within. A minute passes, and a harassed-looking servant -Rin, the poor girl whom the steward has assigned to his sister’s bedchamber- leaves the room, before stopping and falling over herself to bow to him.

“My lord, I apologize, I assure you that I have not abandoned my post and will faithfully serve-”

Zuko raises a hand. “It’s fine. How long has she been…excited?”

“Since this morning, my lord, but she’s only gotten this angry an hour or so ago,” Rin dutifully recites. “Doctor Hiragi is inside now; he sent me to get bandages, as her Highness has shattered a cup and injured herself.”

“Carry on, then,” he dismisses her, sighing, and Rin scurries away.

Azula and the doctor are both yelling behind the closed doors of the bedroom. Bracing himself, Zuko pushes the doors open and lets himself in.

“My lord,” Doctor Hiragi says gruffly as he enters. He is a man past sixty, with a neat, white beard and large spectacles; he is one of the very few of the palace’s staff that had managed to keep his place during Azula’s brief stint as Fire Lord. “Forgive me if I do not rise to greet you.”

The doctor is engaged in a battle for Azula’s hand. He grips a set of tweezers, trying to pick out pieces of glass from her bleeding palm, whereas Azula fights and screams bloody murder. It is not a sight Zuko is unused to, given the past two years, but he wishes he could see it less.

“There’s no need,” Zuko says, approaching the bed. To Azula, he says, “You’re not being reasonable right now. He’s trying to help you. You are hurting yourself.”

Azula whirls to him. Her hair is a rat’s nest, drenched in sweat, and her eyes have that dreaded wild quality they’d taken on during the Agni Kai. It is times like these when Zuko remembers that, at one point in her life, Azula had wanted him dead.

“Reasonable?” she echoes, her voice high and slightly hoarse, no doubt from the screaming. “HA!”

“Azula,” he says wearily.

“Like I need the help of a _peasant!”_ Azula spits in the direction of a generally unimpressed Doctor Hiragi. “I’d rather bleed out.” With one heave, she yanks her hand away and rests it in her lap, letting the blood stain the sheets.

Zuko implements his risk-strategy. “That’s a dumb way to die, Azula.”

“What?”

“I said, that’s a super fucking dumb way to die.”

“I-” Azula watches him warily. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m just saying that I thought you, of all people, would die…cooler. Our ancestors were killed by assassins and warlords. You are being killed by a cup of water you broke yourself,” Zuko says calmly. “I just think it’s kind of dumb.”

“Oh yeah?” Azula retorts, falling for his bait. “ _You’re_ one to talk! _You_ almost got killed by a _needle!”_ She points a finger at him and laughs, high and unrestrained.

“That’s true,” Zuko nods solemnly. “I let Doctor Hiragi heal me, though.” Technically, Katara did it, but for his current purposes he would give the credit to him. “And now I’m alive, and I get to die in a cooler way than you.”

In all honesty, when Azula gets like this, it feels very wrong to play this game with her. Hiragi had warned him, back when Zuko had first discovered this bizarre negotiating strategy, that it would only worsen Azula’s bad habits. But it is in times like these, as her palm was embedded with shattered glass, that he is forced to do it.

Azula watches him suspiciously through the greasy strands of her bangs. “Like what?”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve made a lot of enemies,” he says conspiratorially. “A couple of months ago, they tried to kill me with poison, but failed. No doubt they’ll send something flashier next time, and I’ll go down fighting for my life like the hero from _Nights on the Lionturtle-”_

That is the final straw. She shoves her hand wordlessly at Hiragi, and the doctor gets to work without fuss. They sit there in silence as Rin brings in the bandages.

Hiragi patches up Azula’s hand, then stands up.

“I will be waiting for your Majesty outside, if I may,” he says, as he gathers his equipment into his bag. “I wish to discuss a few things with you in private.”

“Of course,” Zuko says, and Hiragi leaves. He turns to Azula. “Want to sit at the table?”

Azula glares at him with all her old hatred from before.

“Whatever,” she says darkly, and Zuko offers her his arm when she gets out of bed. She ignores him and shuffles to the small tea-table located near the curtained windows, seating herself roughly. Zuko subtly gestures for Rin to change the bedsheets; they’ve been undoubtedly been covered in little pieces of glass, and besides, they smell terrible, like blood and sweat.

“That’s better,” Zuko tries at encouragement. He reaches for the curtain. “Now let’s get some fresh air and sunlight in here-”

As his hand closes on the fabric of the curtain, Azula’s hand shoots out with surprising speed and closes around his wrist.

“No sun,” she said, voice menacing.

“Alright,” Zuko says, releasing the curtain, and, slowly, Azula lets go of his wrist. Her nails -not as well-kept as before, but jagged and uneven- had left crescent marks on his skin. “Now, can you tell me why you did the things you did today? Neither Rin nor the doctor have done anything to hurt you, Azula. They don’t deserve to be treated like this.”

“Traitors, peasants, and fools,” she grits out, staring fixedly at the table. “That’s all I ever see these days.”

“Who are you calling a fool?” Zuko humors her.

“I’m calling you a _traitor.”_

“To whom?” He knows the answer.

“To the Phoenix King.”

“He’s not the Phoenix King, Azula. He is in jail.”

“He _is,_ and _I’m_ the Fire Lord! _I’m_ the Fire Lord, not _you!”_

She has begun to shout again. “You shouldn’t even _count_ as Fire Lord, you know that? I _won,_ but you _cheated,_ and the waterbender _cheated.”_

“That’s not fair of you. Whenever we play pai sho, _you_ cheat.”

“ _This isn’t a game of fucking pai sho!_ ” She slams her fist so hard on the table that Zuko momentarily fears she has broken all of its bones.

“Okay,” Zuko says. “Okay.” He tries a different approach. “I’m sorry I cheated, Azula.”

Azula shoots up. “So you _admit it! You admit you cheated!”_ She whirls to Rin, who is busy tidying up and making tea. “ _Did you hear that? He admits he cheated!”_

“Yes, my princess,” Rin says obediently, fluffing a pillow. She gives Zuko an apologetic look as she awkwardly says, “Fire Lord Zuko is a dirty cheater. I’ll be telling all the other staff of it.”

This has the opposite effect on Azula, as she stomps her foot. “He _isn’t the Fire Lord!”_ she screams at the top of her lungs as the kettle whistles. _“I’m the Fire Lord, it’s mine, I would be better, if I were Fire Lord everything would be better!”_

She spends a good couple of minutes yelling about this, and Zuko lets her, because he recognizes the signs of her tiring out.

“You’re just mad because Father preferred me over you,” Azula concludes, stabbing an accusatory finger in Zuko’s direction.

“Father didn’t love either of us.”

“When did I ever bring up _love,_ you _idiot?”_ Her voice scratchy, Azula collapses in her chair again, all shouted out. “You think you’re so much better than me. You talk to me like I’m a child. But I’m still smarter than you and you can’t handle it.”

“Alright,” Zuko concedes as Rin pours each of them a cup of tea. “Thank you, Rin. Thank Rin, Azula.”

“She hasn’t done anything special. She’s literally just doing her _fucking_ job, _unlike you_. Stop being annoying and go fuck up our country somewhere else where I don’t have to see it.”

He blows on his tea to cool it. “Mm,” he exaggerates as he sips the tea. “That hits the spot. You aren’t going to drink this delicious tea?”

“You sound like _Uncle,”_ Azula says with disgust.

“That’s really nice of you to say,” Zuko says, slightly startled by how right she is. “Come on, drink the tea. It’ll help your headache.”

“How do you know I have a headache?” Azula asks, paranoid. “Did you poison me?”

“You’ve been shouting nonstop all morning. I know I’d have a headache.”

Azula gives him one last look of loathing before she grabs the tea and starts taking long, nervous sips. She crouches over it, posture bent, like she expects someone to run over and steal it.

 _At least she’s not shouting anymore,_ Zuko thinks, with resignation.

Azula eventually agrees to let Rin take her to be bathed. Once they leave, Zuko leaves the room as well, and finds Hiragi waiting from a distance away.

He bows upon his arrival. “Fire Lord Zuko.”

“Doctor,” Zuko acknowledges him. “You wanted to speak to me?”

“Yes, my lord,” he says. “It concerns her Highness. I’m afraid…my treatment is not what is best for her.”

Zuko had expected this eventually. “Doctor, I apologize for any damages to your person or dignity my sister may have inflicted. I’m willing to compensate-”

“That’s not it,” Hiragi interrupts, dispensing with formality entirety. He might as well, at this point. “Your Majesty, I am not _qualified_ to treat your sister.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The illness that Princess Azula suffers from is of a nature that has only recently begun to have been taken seriously,” Doctor Hiragi explains. “Psychology, they call it. Unfortunately, I know of no doctors here in the Fire Nation who have studied what little there is to study of it. We, as a nation, do not have the most…stellar history with the mentally ill.”

Both of them fade into momentary silence, remembering what had happened to Fire Lord Azulon’s younger brother, the late Prince Hideki. Zuko had grown up hearing stories of how, one day, the prince had started talking to himself, and to things he apparently only he could see. At first, he was thought to be deeply spiritual, but it soon became clear that he was in need of help, as he began placing himself in dangerous situations. The then-Fire Lord Sozin had him put to sleep for good. It was a cautionary tale, told to Fire Nation children- _don’t step out of line, don’t cause trouble, or you will end up like Prince Hideki._

The story is a cruel one, a remnant of a nation that punished everything that could not be used to consume. He would never do that to Azula. But he wonders what fate awaited her if she continues like this, untreated.

“What do you suggest I do?” he asked.

“I’ve heard from a colleague of mine that headway is being made with the Lake Laogai victims from Ba Sing Se at the urging of the Avatar,” the doctor suggested. “There’s a doctor there- his name escapes me at the moment, but I will find it eventually. The university hospital is truly where you go to find what you cannot find anywhere else.”

_Of course it’s Ba Sing Se._

“I’m afraid there’s no need for that, Doctor,” Zuko says tiredly. “I cannot send Azula to be treated in Ba Sing Se.”

“But, Your Majesty- this could be our only chance of truly making progress with her. Under proper supervision – I understand General Iroh lives there now-”

“Doctor, you forget who _took_ Ba Sing Se in the first place.”

A pause. “Ah.”

“First, she poses as a Kyoshi Warrior. Then I send her as a patient. If I were King Kuei, I’d see it from a mile away.” Zuko shrugs.

“Yes, of course, my lord. I understand.” Hiragi sighs. “We sure do love burning bridges, don’t we?”

Zuko huffs out a bitter laugh. “We _are_ the Fire Nation, after all.”

“I’m just warning you,” Hiragi cautions, “that Azula’s mental state is going to get worse, with time, without the proper guidance.”

“Worse?”

“Do you know what triggered today’s…episode?”

“I assume she was remembering our father.”

“Not exactly. You see, the curtains had been drawn aside, and the sun’s rays had fallen on her as she slept. She found that she could sense the sunrise, the way a firebender does, and perhaps she felt some hope that the chi-blocking hadn’t worked and that she could bend again. Rin found her practicing katas, but of course, she wasn’t bending. That is when the shouting began.”

Zuko, despite himself, feels a pang of guilt. It is on his own orders -and Hiragi’s- that Azula is constantly chi-blocked. The evidence of the danger of her bending when unhinged is branded on his chest forever. Yet he remembers the brief time when she could bend and he couldn’t, when they were children, and he knows that it is killing her, as it used to kill him.

It reminds him of an old play he once read, of a spiteful thief who had stolen away a dragon’s fire.

“Should I let her bend again?” he finds himself asking. In truth, he does not know why he’s hesitating. Bending is important to Azula, but it also once played a part in her complete self-destruction. Once upon a time, when he was young and bitter, he would have reveled at the notion of seeing his perfect sister brought to such lows. Now, it just upsets him.

It is exhausting, to see your family suffer.

“Absolutely not,” Hiragi says with finality. “You cannot guarantee what she does. She still has vestiges of loyalty to her father, still a warped sense of morality and stakes- she could hurt people. She could try to set him free. No, my lord, it is best if her bending stays inactive for now.”

A perfect cycle. Azula gets worse because she can’t bend. If she bends, she hurts people, so he must take away her bending.

Hiragi seems to have seen the unhappy look on his face, because he softens.

“I will do my best to be of service, my lord,” he says. “It may not be perfect, but, well- maybe, with time, she will heal of her own accord.”

It’s an empty promise, and Zuko knows it.

“Thank you, Doctor,” he says, as another servant runs up to him, panting.

“My lord,” the servant, a young man named Hakuro tells him. “Captain Kaji has sent me to tell you that your- the guests you requested are waiting in the throne room.”

Zuko straightens instantly. He turns to Hiragi and dismisses him before following Hakuro away from the residential wing and to the direction of the throne room. This is a meeting unlike any other, one he’d been preparing for for weeks, having sent undercover guards to retrieve material from the people of Caldera weeks prior.

He mentally reviews his readings. He’d been given an assortment of pamphlets and flyers belonging to the Dragon’s Dawn, the anti-royalist group that had supposedly masterminded the latest attempt on his life. In order to understand one’s opponents, one needs to understand them, and while he understands the type of people that made up the New Ozai Society intimately enough, he had had no idea what the Dragon’s Dawn’s objectives were.

Which brought him to the here and now. The flyers for the Dragon’s Dawn advertise the cruelties that the Fire Nation’s monarchy had exacted on the people- the political prisons, the suppression of free thought, the wealth gap, the crumbling education system, the absolute power of the ruling class- and Zuko is very well aware that there was no such thing as smoke without fire. People are upset, if the Dragon’s Dawn’s growing traction is anything to go by, and Zuko cannot afford civil revolt, not when his country has just barely pulled itself together in the past two years.

So he’d sent out Kaji to find the leaders of the Dragon’s Dawn and invite them to a meeting with him at the palace, much to the chagrin of his advisors. Zuko knows it is awfully naïve of him, but he’d figured that they would refuse to come anyway, so it would have been a good look for him if it appeared that he was extending goodwill that they were actively refusing.

He hadn’t exactly expected them to _come._

He finds his answer soon enough. The throne room had been slightly dark when he’d entered, the servants still in the process of lighting lanterns with the growing sunset, and Zuko hadn’t really clearly seen the three figures kneeling at the foot of the throne. Kaji had overprotectively planted himself between him and the guests, so even when Zuko sits down on the throne, he doesn’t really get a good look at them. It’s only after the lanterns are lit and Zuko shoos Kaji away that he finally discovers that the reason the Dragon’s Dawn are there is because there are bags over their heads and ropes tying their hands behind their backs.

“Kaji!” Zuko exclaims, affronted. “I asked you to invite them to the palace, not kidnap them!”

“They refused to come, my lord.” Kaji has the decency to look embarrassed. “It’s, uh, a direct disobedience to the orders of their Fire Lord. I had legal reasons to arrest them. For, uh, security purposes.”

“They had the right, to say no, Kaji, it was an _invitation,_ for spirits’ sake! Release them at once.”

“Yes, my lord.” Begrudgingly, grumbling to himself, Kaji unties the three’s hands and removes the bags from their heads.

Zuko is greeted with three people who are, surprisingly, not much older than he is. Two of them seem to be in their mid-twenties, normal-enough looking Fire Nation youth, but the girl in the middle has the green eyes of Earth Kingdom heritage. Her thick, dark hair is cropped short, to just below her chin.

The three of them resolutely stand up, refusing to bow to him, glaring at him with hatred reminiscent of Azula. The girl, especially, seems to hold particular contempt for him, even going so far as to spit the ground at her feet, a sign of deep disrespect.

The guards react instantly, pointing their weapons at her, Kaji bellowing, “Apologize to your Fire Lord!” but Zuko raises a hand.

“It’s fine. She has a right to be upset after the way you brought her here,” to the girl, he said, “let’s start over. I apologize for what my men did today. I in no way intended for you to be taken by force. I simply wanted a candid discussion with your group.”

The girl scoffed. “A chance to ambush and arrest us, no doubt.”

Zuko starts to feel a little annoyed.

“I’m within my rights, you know,” he says shortly. “A couple of months ago, I almost died because of you. I’ve read your pamphlets. One of your big grievances with the monarchy is the use of the death penalty, but you sent assassins to do your dirty work.” He sniffs a little indignantly. “They weren’t even very good.”

One of the two men with her stiffens indignantly. “Those people weren’t affiliated with us!”

“Oh yeah?” Zuko alleges, leaning forwards. “Is that why they referenced your group in particular when Kaji interrogated them?”

The men look incensed, stepping forward to shout, but the girl makes a _stop_ gesture with her hands and they yield the floor to her, letting her speak for them. It is already becoming clear that she runs the show.

“It’s true that the people who went after you were once considered members of the Dragon’s Dawn,” she says. “However, their ideals were more…proactive than ours, and after many disagreements they decided to break off and do their own thing. We are in no way affiliated with the attempt on your life.” She looks him up and down. “Even though it would not have been a great loss.”

Zuko both dislikes her and admires her gall.

“So why are we here?” the girl continues. “Did you have your goons kidnap us from our homes so you could ask us why we gave you a boo-boo?” _._

“You’re on thin ice,” he growls. “I only brought you here because I would rather resolve whatever issues you have peacefully, rather than have you incite riots on the streets- the ones I have just barely finished rebuilding, by the way. Your inflaming of the people and your insistence on destabilizing the Fire Nation is doing nothing but creating problems at the moment. I understand what you’re asking for- but this nation _cannot_ afford unrest right now!”

“Do you really understand? Because you read a couple of pamphlets?” the girl asks skeptically. “Frankly, what it looks like right now is that you’re throwing us a bone. The war is over, and the nation is stabilized- what justification do you have for ignoring the demands of the people? Or are they worth less than your council of lords and nobles because they come from the mouths of the poor?”

And he can’t argue with her. She has a point. He knows that the people hit hardest by the war are the common people of his highly class-stratified nation, and he knows that sooner or later, he’s going to have to seriously address the Fire Nation’s social inequality problem with all the ugliness it entails. For all intents and purposes, this girl could just be angrily demanding justice, and who is he to deny her? The fire in her green eyes is oddly familiar.

He forces himself to calm down, which he has gotten better at since the end of the war.

“It seems we got off on the wrong foot,” he says. “I can promise you that both of us want the same things. I understand your anger. Please, stay for dinner, and we can have a real discussion.”

The girl pauses for a long time, narrowing her eyes at him mistrustfully, before turning to confer with her colleagues. After a heated, whispered debate, she turns back to him, squaring her shoulders. “Fair enough. We accept your offer.”

Half an hour later, they are seated at the dining table, Zuko and Kaji across from the girl and her two subordinates. The silence is very awkward. Somebody is making a grating noise by dragging their chopsticks across their plate.

“Alright,” Zuko breaks the silence. “Tell me about yourself.”

The girl cocks an eyebrow, sizing him up.

“My name is Yuki,” she says. “I was born in the former colony of Yu Dao, to a Fire Nation father and an Earth Kingdom mother. When I was ten my father was mortally injured during the war, and, discharged from the military, he decided to move us to Caldera. He had a hard time finding work because of my mom and I being Earth Kingdom, and we…struggled, for a long time. I spent a few years in prison because I got caught stealing food, and it was there where I was educated. Tell me, Fire Lord- have you read the works of Akemi Ito?”

“Akemi Ito?” Zuko feels that the name is vaguely familiar, before he remembers. “Her works have been banned in the Fire Nation for nearly two centuries.”

“Naturally. She was one of our nation’s first monarchy abolitionists.”

“Then I suppose there’s no point in asking me if I’d read her work.”

“Perhaps you should,” Yuki says, smiling slightly. “I could lend you my copy, if you like.”

What strange situations he puts himself in.

“What you’re implying is too…far-fetched,” Zuko says, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. “Ito wanted no Fire Lord at all. That’s practically anarchy.”

“You don’t need a Fire Lord to have a functioning government. Look at the Southern Water Tribe. They elect their chief. The Air Nomads used to have a similar system of their own. And the Earth Kingdom is technically a monarchy, but there are lots of minor towns and kingdoms that have gotten along just fine with elected councils and leaders. Believe it or not, we’ve not always _had_ a Fire Lord.”

Zuko, to some extent, understands what Yuki is trying to tell him, but the thought of it feels big- too big, in fact. He knows nothing about how these systems work. From birth he’d been raised to believe in the idea of absolute power, and it almost scares him to think of a future where that doesn’t exist- but he remembers the repercussions of absolute power, too. A nation, plunged into war. Entire peoples, wiped out. Decades of culture and history, destroyed.

A boy, scarred, banished, with no one brave enough to stand up for him.

He’s been touching his scar, silent for some time, and his guests are looking at him strangely. “I’ll read Ito’s works. If you have any copies, I’d be glad to borrow them, as I’m afraid those we may have possessed are long destroyed.”

“So you agree? To abolish the monarchy?” Yuki has a sparkle in her eyes.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” he says. “All I said is that I would educate myself.”

In the end, their discussion is long, and complicated, and stretches deep into the night. Despite their rough start, Zuko discovers that he likes Yuki. She is smart and driven, and the more he talks politics with her the more he realizes how earnest she is in defending the rights of the people. She is no neo-fascist or terrorist. She is simply a person wronged by the system he personally benefits from, which is something Zuko gradually realizes with growing discomfort.

It seems that Yuki has similarly warmed up to him as well, especially, as the conversation wore on, when Zuko found himself agreeing with her on multiple points. Her tone gradually becomes less hostile and more open to his input.

“I won’t stop advocating for the Dragon’s Dawn,” she tells him, as she and her friends prepare themselves to leave. “But I’m open to more conversations with you. I have to say, I expected you to be older. And more of an asshole.”

“Funny, that’s what I thought about you, too.”

They laugh.

“I’ll bring you Ito’s things tomorrow,” she promises. “You better read them, or I’ll set the harbor on fire.”

He raises a hand in farewell as she leaves. “Fair enough.”

She gives him a last sardonic smile, and it finally occurs to Zuko why she seems so familiar.

She reminds him of Katara.

* * *

_Dear Aang,_

_I hope you are well. I haven’t heard from you or Katara in a while – I assume you guys are busy restoring the Air Nomad temples, and doing “your Avatar magic”, as Sokka calls it- so I won’t nag you too much about it. Just know that both of you are very much missed around Caldera._

_As such, I’m very sorry for the headache I’m about to cause you._

_I will be abdicating from the throne. I’m not exactly sure when- there’s a lot of work to do- but suffice it to say, it’s come to my attention that the current governing system of the Fire Nation is fairly…unsustainable. Funnily enough, it was that last assassination attempt that really got me thinking about that. I kept wondering about what would happen if I died, and who would be left in charge of the Fire Nation, and who would be in charge after them. It would be so, so easy to slip back into war. Frankly speaking, I’ve come to realize that a nation that relies on a single teenager to run it is only bound for ruin._

_I haven’t breached this topic with my council or with the Fire Sages yet; you can imagine how well they would take it (you’ve met them). I still have to work a lot on my proposal, and on my vision for what the future governing system will be like. I’m not completely on my own- I have a surprisingly good frame of reference, and a new advisor on the subject who I’d like you to meet- but I’d really appreciate it if you could come by and provide your own input._

_My advisors say that I’m being naïve, but personally, I’ve never felt surer of anything. I’m definitely not rushing into it, contrary to what many might say. I feel like this might be a real step that my country could take to restore its honor (laugh it up, laugh it up) and get rid of any old regime supporters once and for all._

_In any case, I understand if you can’t make it, as you’re undoubtedly drowning in as much work as I am. I wish you all the best. Please hug Appa for me, and send my warmest regards to Katara._

_Sincerely,_

_Zuko_

* * *

Around a month after Zuko appoints Yuki as his advisor and comes to his decision about abdication, he spots Appa in the sky by pure coincidence. It is one of the rare short spaces of time where he is blissfully alone and simply taking a moment for himself by the turtleduck pond. For the past month, Yuki had taken her new job very seriously, and every moment Zuko did not spend in meetings was a moment where she kept him up late at night, theorizing and planning. And while he greatly appreciated her work ethic, he also desperately needed to rest.

Which is why he nearly spills tea all over himself when he hears Appa roar.

His first emotion is joy; his second is confusion. Still, he casts his doubts aside and rises to greet his friend as the sky bison touches down in the courtyard.

Aang leaps down, smiling at him, and Zuko notices something amiss. His eyes are downcast.

“Sifu Hotman!” he says, fakely animated. “I missed you!”

Zuko hugs Aang back and realizes how tightly he grips him. “Hey, buddy,” he says. “I didn’t know you were coming. You never wrote back.”

Aang scratches the back of his head sheepishly. “Yeah, uh, sorry about that.”

“It’s all good. It’s great to see you.” Zuko cranes his neck to see the top of Appa’s saddle. “Weird, I don’t see Katara. Where is she?”

Aang’s face falls, and Zuko’s heart skips a beat.

“She’s not sick, is she?” he asks, suddenly afraid.

“No, well- not, I mean. Not the way you’d think,” Aang says. Together they sit down near the turtleduck pond again and Aang tells him the whole sorry tale.

Honestly? Zuko doesn’t know how to process it. Naïve as it was, he always kind of assumed that Aang and Katara would be together forever. Guiltily, he realizes that he’d never really imagined that Katara could go through a crisis like that, or that Aang would have it in him to leave her. He’d been simply living in his own little bubble, unaware of the world around him.

 _Just like with Mai,_ he thinks, with shame.

“They hate me now,” Aang says miserably, resting his cheek on the palm of his hand. “Katara hates me for leaving her and Sokka hates me for breaking her heart.”

“I’m sure they’ll come around,” Zuko attempts, tentatively laying a hand on his shoulder. He is totally new to this, the idea that somebody else’s love life could be worse than his. He feels wretched for the both of them. “They’re still your friends. They love you more than anything. Deep down, I’m sure they know you’re doing it because you care about her.”

“She called me a coward as I left,” he sniffs, his big gray eyes full of tears. “She said I was running away like I always do. Sometimes I’m afraid she’s right. Do you think I’m a coward?”

“You know how Katara gets when she’s hurt,” Zuko says, remembering the things she used to spit at him in those first weeks after he’d joined them. “And don’t say stupid things. You’re not a coward.”

“How did you get over Mai?” Aang asks him earnestly, and Zuko blanches, because the answer consists of a lot of embarrassingly tearful nights alone in his bedroom eating fruit tarts and then crying because fruit tarts were her favorite.

“I, uh, was too busy to think about it much,” Zuko bluffs. “Fire Lord stuff.”

“You’re so lucky,” Aang says, oblivious to Zuko’s terrible attempt at lying. “I spent all that time alone on Appa and it was all I could think about. I’m so worried about her. And I can’t even write to see if she’s okay.”

“It’s a good thing you’re here then,” Zuko tries at consolation, smiling feebly. “We can both be miserable and single together, huh? It’s just like old times.”

Aang finally smiles. “Thanks, Zuko.”

Together, they both get up and walk in the direction of the palace. The time for reflection is over. Now, they have work to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAA!!! I assume you guys didn't see this coming. Frankly, it's only fair, and in my opinion Zuko would very easily come to terms with the idea that Maybe The Monarchy Ain't It. Yuki definitely got away from me; I ended up really liking her. I really hope I'm not rushing this whole democracy plot; I don't want to focus on it too much since it's not really the point of the story.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone's lovely comments and kudos!!! You guys have no idea how much I value them, especially since I now have COVID and am now self-quarantining. They're really the best kind of pick-me-up.
> 
> Please leave more!

**Author's Note:**

> AAA! I've been meaning to write this fic for a while and I finally got around to it. I'm so excited for what's in store! There's so much coming up, I can't wait to show you guys.
> 
> Please leave comments or kudos! They are the fuel by which fic writers thrive. Also, come scream at me on tumblr @flamcohotman.


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